Collaboration Tools

Summary: Video conferencing, email, and other tech tools can enhance a company’s culture. Dave and Steve from Portsmouth Computer Group talk about how technology can improve collaboration at work. Listen or read more to find out about collaboration tools.

Mike:  It’s Tech Tuesday, with our good friends Dave and Steve, joining us from Portsmouth Computer Group. And they are here to talk about, well, Tech Tuesday. It’s always a lot of fun and Dave is back from his . . . was it a mini vacation for you?

Dave: No. All work down in Phoenix.

Mike:  All work. Yeah, I’ve heard that before. All work in Phoenix. [crosstalk]

Dave: All work.

Steve: Yeah, they say that.

Dave: [crosstalk]

Mike:  Yeah, beautiful place in Phoenix. You know Dave, I can’t believe you, I’m sorry.

Steve: Yeah.

Dave: Me too.

Mike:  I don’t think Steve believes you either.

Steve: No, no he comes back in the office, he’s like, “It was all work.” No, no, no, what was the temperature like Dave? [crosstalk]

Dave: It was close to 65.

Steve: What was the beach like?

Mike:  That’s not even a truth, that’s like fake news. All work in Phoenix. That doesn’t even make sense, Dave.

Dave: All right, 80 percent work, 20 percent [crosstalk]

Mike:  Thank you very much!

Steve: We were all looking for him when we were watching the Super Bowl. Was he in the stands? We wanted to know if he was in Atlanta.

Mike:  I was wondering if you were down there.

Dave: I was thinking about it.

Mike:  Yeah.

Dave: I was working with one of my vendors. It was fun.

Mike:  Have you gone to a Super Bowl ever?

Dave: I have not.

Mike:  I mean, I think, I mean, it’s great to go experience that whole thing, but why does anybody want to pay, like, three thousand dollars a ticket?

Dave: $3,500 to $6,000 for good seats.

Mike:  It was not sold-out, did you hear about this?

Dave: I did not know that.

Mike:  They had 4,400 tickets that were not sold.

Steve: That’s crazy.

Dave: Yeah.

Steve: Well, maybe we’ll go to the Patriot’s seventh? You want to go to the Patriot’s seventh?

Dave: Patriot’s seventh. What do you think about that, Mike?

Mike:  Where’s it going to be next year? Where’s it going to be next year?

Steve: I don’t know. I don’t know.

Mike:  I just read . . . I’m trying to think where it’s going to . . . oh, I think it’s going to be in Florida next year.

Steve: Yeah.

Mike:  I think so. So, you guys are well. Obviously, we’re happy the Patriots won. It was a great game. Now, I want to ask you something. I was following people on social media. People said, “Oh, it’s such a boring game.” I didn’t think it was a boring game. It was a defensive gem.

Steve: [crosstalk] That game was great.

Dave: It was a gem. It was great. As a Patriots fan, it was great. I think I probably had four friends that I’d had some fun on the shenanigans, and it was boring for them that —

Mike:  Well, they always want offense. They want points.

Dave: They want some offense. But, when you think about it, and I watched some of the re-runs last night, there were some phenomenal plays.

Mike:  Ah, the defense, I mean both quarterbacks were rocked, you know?

Steve: And I was so proud of them because if the whole country hates you, win it in the most hideous manner possible. Win it totally ugly. Just like, ‘oh, ugh! Now you hate us even more, right?’

Mike:  It was just grit and guts Sunday night.

Steve: Oh sure.

Dave: Fourth quarter said it all. I mean, the last two drives. I mean, even the last one when we did the field goal, we would have gone in anyway, but . . .

Mike:  That’s where, you know, terrific Tom comes together and he’s such a smart athlete. I mean, he knows how to put together those winning drives.

Steve: Uh-huh.

Mike:  And, it wasn’t his best game, you know.

Steve: No.

Mike:  But he got it done just good enough.

Dave: That pass to Gronk at the end.

Mike:  Oh, what a good!

Steve: And I’m ready to buy a Van Noy jersey. I want a Van Noy jersey.

Dave: Van Noy jersey.

Steve: He was great.

Mike:  You mention the pass to Gronk. Oh, I had it up here as one of my screen savers up here. Looking at that picture was just incredible.

Steve: Yeah.

Mike:  Just the fact that he caught it, and how Brady just laid it right into his arms. That’s why Brady’s good. So, today, we’re going to talk a little bit about the team, the team concept. [crosstalk]

Dave: Correct.

Steve: Yeah. The team.

Dave: The picture of the team.

Steve: It’s a Patriots’ Day here at Tech Tuesday.

Dave: Exactly. PCG’s rolling rally’s heading south.

Pulling a Team Together with Technology

Mike:  So, how a company can actually use technology to pull the team together, like the Patriots and their team. Let’s talk about that for a second, Dave.

Dave: Awesome. Awesome topic. Steve, light us up right there about the collaboration tools.

Steve: So, yeah, you want to pull your team together, right? So, how do you get them together, other than, like, sticking them in the same room and making them talk to each other? Like, companies do that, I guess, but we’ve talked about a lot of stuff in the last couple months. Things like Microsoft Teams. It’s even called that, right? The idea is that you can collaborate. You can share files, you can chat, you can do video, all in the same application so that you’re not spending time going, “I don’t really know how to do that part.” So, the application itself brings it all together.

So, if you’re doing video conferencing, why are you just emailing with someone if they’re on your team but they’re not in the same building? Say they’re down south, say they’re out west, right? You can video conference. It’s really easy now. All lap tops have a camera. And, so, a lot of times, people have cameras, they don’t know how to use them, right? But now, a lot of the software just has it all built in. You can just go ahead and do it.

One drive, you know, sharing files. There’s no more of this, “How do I connect to the server in the network?” Put your files up in the cloud, and everybody just starts to work together.

Mike:  Now everybody does have those meetings, now. You put them up on the big screen, and, you know, you don’t have to be in the same room anymore, really.

Steve: Nope.

Dave: Nope.

Mike:  Board rooms can connect with other board rooms. And, conferences can be done digitally, as you say, in the cloud, and everything else. It’s quite amazing the technology that allows it to happen like that, right?

Creating a Company Culture with Technology

Steve: Yeah, yeah, so what you’re trying to do is build a culture, right? So, does your company have a culture? The Patriots have a culture, right? They always talk about it. All the other teams are, like, envious of it. So, as a company, how do you have a culture of your employees feel like they have an easy way of asking other employees for help if they’re stuck? Or, do they have a culture that can go, “Hey boss, I’m really struggling here. It doesn’t look like I have a lot of things on my plate, and you’re ignoring me. How do I …” So, how do you build that culture? The technology can help that now.

It used to be just you did it through company meetings, you did it though company outings. And those are still valid.

Mike:  Sure.

Steve: But now the software really works to your advantage. Are you guys chatting with each other? You don’t have to just email. You can chat. You can do video, right? You can share the files.

Mike:  Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave: I find it that a lot of companies that we like to do business with, they embrace the IT. And there’s a lot of companies that are doing that work, Mike. And there’s really no vision of what they want to do with the IT. And then there’s companies that embrace IT to get more productivity, more efficiency, look at the gross margin. How can we do better customer service? How can we do these meetings with our customers? Like with me, with teams, which like to be called Skype, every day now my meetings are visual. It’s video. Be able to see the facial expressions. The ability to express your feelings. It’s a big difference talking over the phone versus seeing someone. When you tell them the number’s 20,000, you can see their face. So, I’ve embraced that a lot, and we’re just really, at PCG, just ramping up the whole culture.

Video Conferences Enhance Communication

Mike:  You know, I remember, as a kid, watching the cartoon show The Jetsons, and they had video phones. And I said, “That’ll never happen,” you know?

Dave: Yep.

Mike:  And now we have, basically, video phones.

Dave: Yeah.

Mike:  I mean, the phones do FaceTime. We do all sorts of stuff, as you say, Skype, and everything is viewer-initiated. I mean, you can actually see people and talk to people and see their expressions, you know?

Steve: And we’ve all seen how, like, when you’re texting a friend, or even in business, when you’re emailing, you spend some time trying to clarify what you wrote in the email.

Mike:  All the time, Steve. All the time.

Steve: Because it didn’t come out the way the inflection that maybe you meant it. In video, that doesn’t happen. You’re just meeting with them, and you can either be mad at them or you can be happy with them. Or, they can tell you that they’re a little dissatisfied or they’re very happy with your stuff, so . . .

Using Collaboration Tools to Get the Job Done

Mike:  You know, we’ve heard the Patriots thing from Belichick, do your job type thing. But you’ve brought up the point, too, how companies can use technology to kind of foster that whole strong ‘do your job’ mentality, right?

Dave: Right.

Steve: Yeah, so the idea is to empower them, right? So, what you want to do is . . . do your employees feel like they can’t do something because it just doesn’t work, right?

Mike:  Sure.

Steve: So, the idea is . . . and that’s where the IT company comes in. That’s our part, you know? But come in and go, “Listen.” Try and give them the power so that the stuff isn’t fighting them, right? You want to be able to do your job. Not have to be, like, “Well, the software just keeps doing this to me.” Or, “You know, I don’t do that because it never works.” Right? So, you need to hear that from your employees and get rid of it.

Dave: I see, a lot of times, Mike, employees sitting on a machine, they call it the dinosaur. It’s five, six, seven years old. Technology was so different then than it is now. And you watch them do their work, three, four, five minutes at a time before . . . that little hour glass is running. The system just can’t keep up with today’s technology.

Mike:  I mean, they can’t be as efficient or productive as they want to be or could be.

Dave: Think about it, ten minutes a day.

Mike:  Yeah.

Dave: An hour a week.

Mike:  That’s crazy.

Dave: Do the math. Within three or four months . . . embrace them.

Mike:  Oh yeah.

Dave: Give them what they need, and they want to work from home, let them work after hours.

Mike:  Sure. Sure.

Get the IT Department Involved to Help

Hey, we’re speaking to the guys, Dave and Steve, from Portsmouth Computer Group with convenient offices in Portsmouth and Dover. You can check out their sites. pcgit.com. pcgit.com. The guys are always here as part of Tech Tuesday. What else can we share with listeners? One final point before we move on this morning.

Steve: Yeah, so one of the things you’re trying to do as a company is you want to win. You want to win consistently, just like those Patriots, right?

Mike:  Sure. Yeah.

Steve: So, what a lot of people don’t know about the Patriots is that after every game, Belichick hands out to all of his coaches, why did we win that game? Why did we lose that game? And then, they have to fill this form out. They have to write down why they lost or won. And then they all get together, right? So, what that does is it eliminates what everybody thinks might have happened. They have a conference. They talk about it. So that everybody leaves going ‘we know why we won as a group.’

So, what you’re trying to do is, with your technology part, you want to be able to understand what is working and what isn’t. You want to get from your employees, your managers, everybody, what are the problems. Figure out what they are so that you’re winning all the time.

Mike:  So really a constant kind of critique all the time as to after a major project.

Steve: Yep.

Mike:  Whether it was successful or not, and what made it successful.

Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike:  Or, what we can improve upon.

Steve: Yeah, and you’ve got to involve your IT department, right? We’ve talked about this a couple of times.

Mike:  Sure, yeah.

Steve: We can’t fix if we don’t know that there’s a problem. And then we find out that you’re unhappy, and that’s terrible.

Dave: And I always use the four helpful lists. Such a simple thing, Mike, with everything. What’s right? What’s wrong?

Mike:  Sure.

Dave: What’s missing? And what’s confusing? And it’s pretty easy when you start thinking about that. The people that are on the IT, what’s missing or confusing, then let’s get a plan. Let’s make it right. Simple stuff.

Mike:  Alright. Portsmouth Computer Group. Check out their website, pcgit.com. You can call them in Portsmouth at 603-431-4121, or in Dover, 603-750-0101. Dave and Steve, joining us today.

Dave: What a great day in Patriots’ land. Let’s enjoy the rolling rally. [crosstalk]

Steve: I hope they don’t get rained on.

Dave: Oh, it’s going to be great.

Mike:  Nah, not today. It’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be in the mid-50s. They’ll see some sunshine. A million people. A million of your friends will be there.

Steve: They’re not all friends of mine, but . . .

Mike:  They’re all friends of yours, Steve, come on.

Dave: Are you going down today?

Mike:  I don’t think so.

Dave: Why not?

Mike:  I have commitments right here.

Dave: You can do it on the show. Do the show on the road.

Mike:  I can’t.

Dave: Take one of these vans. The rolling road show with Mike.

Mike:  I wouldn’t be able to get into the city after ten o’clock.

Steve: Not at all.

Mike:  Are you kidding me? If you’re not down there now, you’re not getting there.

Dave: Yeah.

Steve: That’s exactly right.

Mike:  Thanks guys.

Dave: Our pleasure.

Mike:  7:54 on WTSN. Tech Tuesday with the Portsmouth Computer Group guys, Steve and Dave. They join us every Tuesday morning at 7:40.